


When I'm not the only one

by vrepitsals



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Space family, Team as Family, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 07:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14373564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vrepitsals/pseuds/vrepitsals
Summary: They're still standing in the middle of the hallway, when an indignant shout comes from far away, reverberating down the castle corridors at a much higher decibel than the late hour would warrant."Keith is your favourite brother? I bought you a video game!"______Pidge learns that blood is not a prerequisite for family.





	When I'm not the only one

**Author's Note:**

> This was my piece for the Pidge Voltron Zine. 
> 
> Working on the zine has been such a fun and rewarding experience, and you can get a free copy of the zine [here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEr9T_JogRI2jHuupvl_GVG7GRwFJ61eLR25lngPJD7DmTaQ/viewform).

She's sitting on the kitchen counter, sprinkling chocolate chips into a bowl while Matt stirs the mixture with a wooden spoon. They're almost done, and in half an hour she knows they'll have freshly baked peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies.

She feels grown up, being allowed to help in the kitchen with only her brother's supervision. She's wearing her brand new green dress, the one she'd spent half-an-hour spinning in that morning, trying to memorise the unfamiliar way the fabric swept across her legs.

Her mother had pulled her hair up into pigtails and smiled at her from behind a camera as she twirled, then bundled her up in her arms. She'd received a kiss on the cheek and revelled in hearing her name from her mother’s lips. She'd never felt safer.

Her favourite cookies are like the cherry on top of the cake, the celebration of something she's wanted for years and only just attained.

Her brother makes a dramatic reprimand when she eats a chocolate chip and opens his mouth wide, swooping for and missing the chip she throws.

She giggles as he bends down and pops it in his mouth anyway, citing the five second rule. She continues to watch, eagerly accepting when Matt offers her the chance to stir the bowl.

He smiles down at her as she works, and declares the cookies complete with a flourish.

It's as he's pulling out the baking paper that she realises their vital mistake.

"We forgot to add the pidge of love!" She says, ready to clamber off the counter in order to grab the mysterious ingredient that their mother adds to everything she cooks.

Matt stops and stares at her for a second before he starts to laugh.

"Yes, we definitely can't forget that!" he says, wiping away a tear before showing her how to do a sprinkling motion, adding their blessing to the mixture.

He hands her back the wooden spoon.

"Better make sure it's stirred in properly."

He grins at her and she smiles back, sweeping the spoon through the dough in the figure 8 motions their mother had taught her.

They scoop out the dough with their hands and roll it into balls between their palms. Matt hands her the spoon to lick as he leaves to ask their father to put the tray in the oven for them. He lifts her off the counter and lets her pick the TV show they watch while they wait for the cookies to be done.

It's the best birthday she's ever had.

"They look great, Pidge," Matt says when their father places the cookies on a heatproof mat, batting his children's hands away from the hot tray.

She looks at her brother and tries to raise one eyebrow the same way their mother does.

"Pidge?"

"Yeah," Matt says, ruffling her hair and laughing as she squeals, "because you're our own little 'pidge of love'. Our most important ingredient."

She smiles at him, and he grins back, a certain mischief in the quirk of his lips that she can't seem to place.

In eight years she'll be telling him she hates the nickname, a slightly embarrassing story of childhood ignorance and Matt's warped sense of humour. In ten years it'll be one of the few connections to her family and planet that she still has, and she'll hold it tight with no plan to ever let it go.

But for now her chest feels lighter than ever. A new nickname, her first dress and her favourite cookies.

Life couldn't possibly get better.

* * *

 

Coran looks tired.

He always does, at least to some degree. Pidge doesn’t think she's ever seen him without loss and exhaustion lingering behind his eyes.

All of them need a spa day. Sometimes it feels like the entire team is running on empty. But Coran and Allura have been fighting far longer than the paladins have. They don't have a home waiting for them when this is all over.

Sometimes Pidge can see Coran's uncertainty in the crack between his smile.

But he hides it well. He wanders over to her research as if he's been resting all day, without a care in the world. In actuality, Pidge knows he's been cleaning the castle, preparing training sessions, assisting Allura with recon and checking up on all of them and helping when he can.

She wants to tell him to go have a nap. She wants to give him something to ease the burden, even just a little.

"I found the next link in the chain," she says instead.

It's taken three days and feels like nothing. Coran still smiles like it's progress.

"Oh?" he asks. He leans forward to look at the screen over her shoulder.

"The ship Matt was on docked near the Vaekla system, and unloaded cargo before jumping into hyperspace," she says, "it's been stationed for combat ever since. The logs don't mention the prisoners, but they must have been moved around the same time as the cargo."

The one thing that seems crystal clear in all this is that the Galra value prisoners as less than worthless. They are shepherded from ship to ship in a seemingly endless chain until a more permanent prison happens to be on the ship's route.

They’re rarely listed in logs at all, and where they are there’s merely the number of prisoners and a date. She’s struggled to keep track of which group Matt is in, and the disquiet of her mind whispers that she might not even be on the right track.

"The Vaekla system, that sounds familiar," Coran says.

"It one of the biggest Galran cargo hubs on this side of the galaxy."

Coran nods and taps his finger against his chin.

"Do you know the ship they were transferred to?"

"The base has enough resources to hold prisoners for about a week at a time. I've just finished compiling a list of all the ships that went through there within a week of the prisoners arriving. I'm just about to start cross-referencing their cargo, logs and destination routes to come up with some likely candidates."

Just saying the sentence drops a weight on whatever small piece of optimism she still had going. She thinks of how little of the cross referencing can be done automatically, and the seemingly endless list of ships.

Coran just nods and pats her on the shoulder. His presence does make her feel a little better, for all that she knows he'll give her some words of encouragement before going back to his own duties.

"Well then, we'd better get started."

Coran plops down into the seat next to her and pulls up a monitor. Pidge looks at him in shock for a moment before distributing the list between them.

The time passes eons faster than it did that morning. Coran tells her a story about King Alfor and a rather forward Torian diplomat as they work, and Pidge's stomach hurts from all the laughing by the time they take a break for dinner.

* * *

 

The mind is such an inefficient memory storage system.

Pidge knows that she had an album of family pictures back at home. She had backups on external hard drives and CDs and physical copies stashed in just about every room.

When Matt and her Dad disappeared, she swore she would never forget them. She would never lose the family photos of them, no matter what natural disaster or piece of bad luck might strike. She knew one day she would use the photographs to find them.

She'd brought the picture of Matt with her to the Garrison and to space beyond. But she'd left the pictures of her father at home. She'd thought one photo she could pass off as coincidence, but any more would make her real identity obvious.

She'd been just paranoid enough, but in a completely unhelpful direction.

Some days she tries to picture her father's face, and she can feel her memory falter. It takes her brain minutes to construct something that resembles him, but when she tries to zoom in, to see the quirk of his cheesy grin, it blurs away to nothing.

She sees the uncanny valley whenever she tries to think hard about home.

She doesn't mean to bother Shiro on the bad days. It's not like it's a conscious thing, she'll just be getting some food goo and he'll be sitting at the table with a cup of what Coran swears sounds just like green tea. Or else she'll be training with the rest of the team, and he'll notice that the bags under her eyes have multiplied overnight.

She knows he sees what's happening, because always, without fail, he'll start talking about her family.

He never asks her about it directly, but the tales from the Kerberos mission remind her of things that have slipped her mind.

How Matt sang Lady Gaga at the top of his lungs when the world felt too heavy. Her father's habit of accidentally stealing other people's combs. The stories flesh out her family in her mind's eye, transforming them back from vague recollections into actual people.

People she can see again.

People she is going to.

Some days space seems intent to rip the past from her. To fog her memories and cloud her perspective, to block her from anything but the battles and missions and death.

But she knows that whenever she starts to forget what's important, Shiro will make sure she remembers.

* * *

 

Allura pulls her aside after a debriefing for another diplomatic mission. Pidge expects something to be wrong or there to be extra work to do.

Sometimes Pidge feels like she manages to accidently insult the princess every time they talk. Allura always accepts her apologies with grace, and although they've become closer over the past few months, Pidge still feels the need to hold herself back somewhat, before her tongue manages to undo all their progress.

Perhaps that's why missions and training still seem to dominate their conversations.

"What's up Allura?" she asks, already half calculating what she could accomplish for Allura before they land planetside.

"This new mission doesn't require us to wear our armour, but we will need something more formal than our regular attire. I was wondering if you'd like to borrow a dress for the occasion?"

Pidge stares at her for a moment. She's suddenly transported back to that day all those years ago. The hallway mirror, fabric whooshing around her legs and a feeling of peace she never expected to find.

Allura's face shifts with her silence.

"Of course, if you'd prefer I'm sure Coran can find you a suit-"

"No," Pidge cuts her off in her haste, "I'd love to borrow something. Thank you."

She can't keep a grin off her face. Allura returns it before leading her to her bedroom, where they spend the afternoon going through her princess-sized closet.

Allura seems to have stories about every item of clothing: tales of tall trees and impromptu play-fights that ripped holes in ball gowns; diplomatic missions to planets that may no longer exist; soft fabric for dresses worn around the castle, on days she could forgo her royal duties and just be a child.

Pidge feels a little foolish trying on dresses Allura wore when she was 10, but as soon as the fabric goes over her head she feels a sigh of relief spread through her.

The clothes she normally wears are one of the only connections to Earth she still has. But these dresses, alien as they are, remind her of another kind of home.

Allura retires to the edge of her bed and comments on each dress Pidge tries. For some she is loud and exuberant, quoting lines she's heard from the team like "walk walk fashion baby" or Altean slang that she assures is positive.

For others she can't help but laugh at the outdated buttons that apparently clash terribly by current standards and silhouettes that are unflattering in every way.

Together they create a shortlist. Then, one by one they eliminate options until a winner is found.

The dress is a deep emerald with a high neckline, finishing just below her knees. On Altea it would have been used for lunch events or as less formal day wear, but Pidge has never felt more like royalty.

The weight of the dress is comforting and familiar, and she could easily fit her bayard, along with any other useful gadgets in one of its almost-impossible-for-their-sheer-size pockets.

Allura looks at her in confusion when she discovers the pockets and promptly sticks her hands in them, twirling around with gleeful shouts of their existence.

"Of course it has pockets. What kind of dress doesn't?"

Pidge turns and stares at her with the kind of reverence that thus far has been reserved only for technology.

"Altea must have been a wonderful place."

She sees Allura smile with a far-away look in her eyes.

"Yes, it really was," she smiles at Pidge like that dress is helping keep the past alive.

Even when they're done choosing an outfit for the meeting, they continue going through the wardrobe. This time Allura joins her, pulling on gifts from diplomats of other planets and piling scarves around her neck.

Pidge laughs at the look it creates and Allura strikes a pose, prompting Pidge to do the same.

When they've finally expended every item in the closet, Allura picks up a large pile of dresses Pidge hadn't even noticed her making, and tells Pidge to lead the way back to her room.

Pidge looks at her in disbelief for a moment, but can't help the smile pulling at her lips.

"Are you sure you don't mind me wearing them?" she asks as she pushes aside the various electronics she'd stacked in the clothing-devoid closet.

"Of course, hand-me-downs are an important part of Earthen bonding," Allura grins at her, before looking slightly sheepish, "or is this like the time Lance told me that the middle finger was a sign of great admiration and respect?"

Pidge laughs at the memory, and all the healing pods Lance had to clean in punishment.

"No, that's right. Just, thank you."

Pidge isn't sure if she'll ever be able to express how much she means it. Allura just smiles at her and hefts all the dresses into her closet in one graceful motion Pidge could never hope to replicate.

* * *

 

Pidge is wearing one of her new dresses when she enters the lounge and gets comfy on one of the big couches. She has her laptop with her, but there's no pressing intel to translate or interpret. She fiddles with a few of her passion projects, but can't seem to focus.

Lance had greeted her when she walked in, and he's sitting on the next couch over, working on a jumper using sharpened sticks that were once part of some Altean extreme sport.

Pidge finds herself continually distracted by the soft clack of the needles.

It takes her back to when her mother would sit next to her father on the couch, knitting squares for their local charity group during family movie night. She'd always promised Pidge that she'd teach her one day.

But life was always too busy, and then Kerberos happened and family movie nights stopped. The clack of needles and any sense of life drained from their house.

She stares blankly at her laptop screen and imagines bringing her mother back a blanket, one knitted in space. She imagines knitting with her during future family movie nights. She imagines the warmth of yarn slipping through her fingers feeling like her mother's hugs.

She turns her head towards Lance and he looks up from his knitting. He grins easily at her, one eyebrow raised in an unasked question.

"Can you teach me how to knit?" she asks.

Lance lets out a happy of bark of laughter, and all but throws his needles to the side as he exclaims.

"Of course I can! You know, I am an excellent teacher."

Pidge rolls her eyes at him, but the smile that overtakes Lance's face is contagious. He ruffles her hair as he leaves to grab another pair of needles and some yarn.

Pidge's first square looks more like a dilapidated rhombus. Her second isn't much better.

But Lance just has this proud look on his face as he examines them. He weaves her tales of all the holey scarves he gave his mother for Christmas when he was small.

Pidge smiles as she casts on her third attempt.

* * *

 

"Hey Pidge, can I get a hand with something?"

She looks up at where Hunk is smiling at her from the entrance of the room. She'd originally come in to the lounge room to knit. The blanket she's making is almost halfway done, and she preemptively misses it whenever she works late into the night without its warmth around her shoulders.

But her laptop had sat and stared at her. Taunting her with puzzles and uncracked codes that she's never been able to resist.

Hunk's voice snaps her out of what the other's affectionately call her 'technology haze', and the laptop all but whines at her as she puts it down to follow Hunk into the hallway.

They don't seem to be following the familiar path to their joint workshop, and Pidge frowns.

"What do you need help with?"

Hunk just turns to her with a secretive grin.

"Just a little something I've been working on," he says, pausing at the end of corridor for a moment before his eyes light up in recognition and he leads them left.

Secrecy isn't like Hunk. They share information on their projects as easily as breathing, exchanging ideas with barely a need to speak. She and Hunk are the only ones on the ship to truly appreciate the intricacies of what they do, and she holds her comrade in arms in high regard.

She manages to hold her tongue for almost a minute before the curiosity gets the better of her.

"Is it problems with the real-time Galra tracker?" she asks. Hunk lets out a laugh.

"No."

"Is it time to re-scramble the communication frequencies?"

"Not for another few days."

She hums and taps a finger against her chin.

"It's not modifications to Yellow?"

"Yes."

Pidge's eyes light up and Hunk looks at her with a grin.

"It's not," he says, and picks up the pace, laughing at her grumbling.

They continue winding down the castle corridors, watching them get smaller and darker. Hunk leads her to a part of the ship she's never been before, stretching hallways of doors leading to what she assumes are guest rooms their team of seven have no use for.

Hunk seems to stop at one of them at random, but when he flicks his wrist to open the door, it asks for a passcode. As if it were the armoury, or the keeper of a great secret.

When the door opens Pidge can see a faint glow emitting from the room. She takes in the mass of contraptions taking over half the floorspace, all leading up to a projection of a familiar start-up screen.

Killbot Phantasm 1 gazes back at her.

Her eyes are fixed on the game she's spent months trying and failing to play. A grin takes over her face and she swears she starts to tear up a little.

"I was thinking maybe later I could get some help carrying it up to one of the larger common rooms," Hunk says, as she stares at the screen in a daze, "but for now do you want to try multiplayer?"

Pidge takes the offered controller and asks herself how she ever got so lucky.

"Oh it's on," she says. Hunk cheers and presses start.

* * *

 

Pidge is seriously considering just snuggling down and sleeping in the cold, hard metal of her chair.

Her bed feels light-years away, an insurmountable distance. Her limbs ache at the thought and her mind lies, tells her that surely if she just lets her eyes drift shut, she'll be able to muster up the energy to make the journey. Just five minutes is all she'll need.

The part of her brain that's holding the fort together, that's somehow still functioning after 12 hours piloting her lion and running through Galra battlecruisers and three days before that working around the clock to decode the intel for this stealth mission, feels like this information is somehow sketchy. But she can't gather enough evidence to refute it.

She's just starting to sink into sweet, sweet rest when someone grabs her wrists and hoists them over their shoulders. After a jostle, she can feel hands under her legs securing her in place, pressed up against someone's back.

Then, despite any effort on her part, she's moving. 

Pidge musters the last of her energy to pry open her eyes. Apparently the thing scratching her nose is actually long, black hair.

"Thanks Keith," she says, some part of her feeling their slow, lumbered movements and reminding her that Keith must be almost as tired as she is.

Or maybe not, the way he pulls his arms to boost her further up his back, and the smile she can hear when he says "No problem Pidge."

Her mind marks her current situation as ‘safe’ and resumes its descent into slumber. Just as she's about to slip away, Pavlovian conditioning pulls a final phrase from her lips.

"You're my favourite brother."

Keith pauses, and Pidge sluggishly realises that there was something unusual about that statement.

She's said it a thousand times, whenever Matt would give her the remote without a fight, or team up with her in Trivial Pursuit, or when the night got late and he'd piggyback her to her room, a million worlds away but exactly like this.

Every time Matt's response was exactly the same:

"I'll call it an achievement when I'm not the only one you've got."

It looks like he may have to start doing just that.

Or not, because apparently Keith has swept the title out from under him.

And part of Pidge wants to cry, because it feels like every day her Earth family drifts further and further away. And part of her wants to laugh as she tries to imagine the look on her mother's face when she introduces her to her new uncle and sister and four new brothers. Because she has to believe that one day she'll bring her families together.

Even if her team never consider her family back.

They're still standing in the middle of the hallway, when an indignant shout comes from far away, reverberating down the castle corridors at a much higher decibel than the late hour would warrant.

"Keith is your favourite brother? I bought you a video game!"

The voice is easily identifiable as Lance's, and Pidge can imagine him in his pyjamas, half a face mask applied, his features pulled into put-on disgust.

"Yeah, well I set it up!" comes a deep voice from even further in the ship. Hunk's deep tones betray far more humour than Lance's, and Lance squawks.

"I taught you how to knit!"

"I helped you decode 20 million lines of cargo logs!"

Pidge can almost see Hunk's teasing smile and Lance's over-exaggerated hand movements.

"The point is: your favourite brother is Keith?!" Lance yells in indignation.

A laugh is ripped from of Pidge's throat, and it mingles with laughter coming from Keith before drifting back down the hallway. It's answered by two over the top declarations of future retribution sent Keith's way.

When Keith drops her off at her door, she hugs him tight as she wishes him goodnight. His cheeks are red and wet, but a smile threatens to overtake his face as he returns the hug, his arms gentle but firm around her shoulders.

Then she's in her room, kicking off her shoes but otherwise letting nothing distract her from the sweet comfort of her bed. She pulls the blankets up to her neck and lets herself snuggle into the warmth which seems to be emanating from her heart.

And perhaps it's been building up over months, but it still hits her with surprising clarity.

For the first time, the Castleship truly feels like home.


End file.
